Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Yuri's Night 2013 Under Space Shuttle Endeavour

Episode Date: April 15, 2013

Planetary Radio Live was on stage at the World Space Party with guests George and Loretta Whitesides and Bobak "Mohawk Guy" Ferdowsi.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi podcast listeners, it's your admiring host Matt Kaplan here with another of these special informal messages just for you guys. I wanted to do this because I wanted to thank those of you who have added recent reviews to wherever it is that you hear our podcast, whether it's Stitcher or iTunes or anyplace else, and invite anybody else out there who's interested, all of those who send us lovely notes and tell us how much you're enjoying the program, to do the same, share your opinion of Planetary Radio, your love for space exploration, with other people. I also want to mention the opportunity to support this program in a much more tangible way. Have you ever noticed if you go to planetary.org slash radio, a little bit down on the right side of the screen,

it says support Planetary Radio. That's where you can make a donation in any amount to support this program. And if you give us $50, you'll get a Planetary Radio t-shirt. You don't have to win the contest. You don't have to wait around for random.org to get you in there. Please do check that out. We very much would love to get your support, and I will be delighted to thank you personally. By the way, my offer to anyone who gives us $5,000 or more to come to wherever you are and have dinner. That still stands.

I'm sure you can use the same form. Boy, would I be bowled over by a donation like that. Anyway, it'll be a heck of a dinner, won't it? Thanks so much. Very special show today as we take you to Yuri's Night. Enjoy. We're live at Yuri's Night 2013. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, and I'm at the California Science Center underneath a spaceship. This is the final home of Space Shuttle Endeavor, where it has already been visited by tens of thousands of visitors, and this year it's the venue for one of nearly 350 parties spread across every continent, all of them celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the first journey by a human beyond our planet. Stay with us for a conversation with two of the founders of Yuri's Night, Loretta and George Whitesides, and another guy who is driven by a passion for the cosmos.

His name is Bobak Ferdowsi. I keep putting the K in there. But you may know him as JPL's Mohawk guy. First, though, I'm joined, as always, by my colleague at the Planetary Society, our planetary evangelist, the one and only Emily Lakdawalla. Hi, what are you going to take us through? Today I'm going to talk to you about the golden age of space exploration. We're here to celebrate the legacy of Yuri Gagarin and his pioneering flight into space.

It's hard not to feel nostalgic about that time in space exploration when men were first landing on the moon and we were first building spacecraft that could be launched and then reach other planets. We felt like we were just about to step into the future. We were on the verge of living in the future. Well, of course, the last person, the last man ever to stand on the moon left it before we even ever got to the surface of Mars. We did launch spacecraft to Mars. Mars grew in our forward view.

But once we got there, it wasn't like we wanted it to be. It was kind of desolate. It was dead. It was cratered. And when we did land on the surface with Viking, we found this dry, dead, dusty place that looked like nothing had happened there for millions of years. There was no life there. We didn't find any evidence whatsoever that there had ever been life there. And we've been searching since then for any evidence

of life on Mars, and we haven't found it yet. The era of space exploration, it kind of hit a low point for a while, and it was actually at that low point when I was a kid. The last man left the moon before I was born. It was, you know, it was just not part of my childhood. My childhood didn't have much planetary exploration. We certainly didn't have much in the way of astronauts. My dreams of space were dreams of transformers and Robotech and Voltron. I wrote fan fiction about transformers flying across the space

and fighting great battles and having adventures. This actual exploration of space just was not on my radar screen. But that began to change as I came of age. The very same year that we lost seven astronauts in the terrible tragedy of the Challenger disaster, a spacecraft called Voyager flew past the planet Uranus and sent us these views of worlds much stranger than I could ever have imagined. And as we left Uranus in our rearview mirror, there were promises of great things to come. As I was graduating from college, we sent a spacecraft that did finally return to

the surface of Mars with this cute little robot named Sojourner. And she stood up, and she got off, and she rolled down onto the surface of Mars and got those little wheels dusty with red soil. That was exploration. The robot was stepping forth onto the surface of another planet. Probably the most exciting thing for me in the last decade or so of space exploration was the chance that we got to ride down with this little flying saucer called Huygens into this strange, distant world called Titan. We flew into the murky mystery of these

clouds. We got closer with Huygens. We saw the little line of the haze at the top of the globe. We got deeper. We got deeper. We got underneath those clouds. And the deeper we went, the hazier it got, the more it began to look like Los Angeles. If you look down there, can't you see Long Beach? You can see the port. And it's right there. This is a planet that is so far away from the sun. It is so distant and so slow and so cold that the rocks that you're seeing on the surface of this world are actually made of water ice. That water ice is so hard it acts like rock. Those rivers are not carved by water. They were carved by liquid methane, liquid natural gas, which drops in gigantic baseball-sized raindrops in slow motion from actual clouds in storms that wet the surface

with methane that runs and makes lakes and oceans across this strange world. It is cool. It is cool what we are exploring right now. Now, robots are not the be-all and end-all of space exploration. Humans will follow them. Robots are just breaking the path for us. The most important path breaker right now is a robot named Curiosity, who's just a little bit bigger than her predecessor named Sojourner. We can ride across Mars right now on the shoulders of this great robot. We can see through those funnily misshapen, missized eyes,

and we can see this amazing landscape that's more dramatic than anything we have explored on Mars before. We can even see the surface of Mars change before our eyes. You can see dust storms blow through, obscure the distant mountains, and then we see them again. And I'm hoping that some point in the near future, Curiosity is going to do what her predecessor Spirit did and take a photo of the sunset on Mars just for the heck of it. There's no particularly great reason to take this other than that it is awesome. So these robots are breaking our path. There will be humans who will follow them to the surface of Mars and make a future

place for us on the surface of another planet. But there will always be places that are too difficult for humans to explore. We will always need robots to serve as our eyes, our legs in places that we can't go to. Places like the surface of Venus. Places like those lakes on Titan. And so I'm here to tell you today that we actually are living in the golden age of exploration. It is happening right now. It is happening before our very eyes. You all can live it by going onto the web

and exploring through the eyes of these robots. And as long as we can keep the administration from stopping it, we can carry it on into the future. So like we said, go over there, sign those petitions, and help us make a future in space. Thank you. PETER BAKERLIN- Emily Lakdawalla. Emily is a senior editor for the Planetary Society, and

she's our planetary evangelist and chief blogger at planetary.org. You can catch her hosting our weekly Google Plus Hangout on Thursdays, or you may see her writing in Sky and Telescope magazine, where she's a contributing editor. I'll be right back with Bobak Ferdowsi and URI's night founders, George and Loretta Whitesides. This is Planetary Radio. Loretta Whitesides. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars. This is taking us our next steps in following the water and the search for life,

to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do. And together, we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images,

great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Welcome back to Planetary Radio Live. That is great. The check's in the mail, everybody. I'm going to my great aunt's 102nd birthday tomorrow.

She was born less than 10 years after Orville and Wilbur's first powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Yuri Gagarin circled the Earth when she was 50 years old. And now, if she had the money and the inclination, she could buy a ticket from George over here for a ride into space. How many of you want to take that ride? All right, let me introduce a couple that already has seats reserved, beginning with this woman here. As an FAA-certified flight attendant for Zero Gravity Corporation's G-Force One, Loretta Whitesides has been on over 85 weightless flights and has adapted

to a world in which everything floats. She serves as flight director for that company. Has anybody seen James Cameron's spectacular 3D IMAX film, Aliens of the Deep? It's great. It is as much about life we may find out there as the interesting life we find here at the bottom of the ocean. If you saw it, you saw Loretta diving to deep undersea vents of the sort that may very well have been the birthplace of life on Earth. She's also worked in the Canadian Arctic at, is it Houghton Crater?

Yeah, Houghton. Houghton Crater, doing research for NASA on plant biology and extreme environments. In 2005, she and George got on the waiting list for a suborbital Spaceship Two flight into space. That was five years before George became the CEO of Virgin Galactic. These days a lot of their attention is given to designing the next phase of human space travel. Please welcome Loretta Whitesides. Thanks Matt. My pleasure. George Whitesides is also president of Virgin Galactic, the spaceflight company founded by Sir Richard Branson.

With Scaled Composites, the company has developed the White Knight II and Spaceship II, based on the X Prize winning Spaceship I. George guides all aspects of the company that will soon begin commercial operation at Spaceport America in New Mexico. This includes oversight of the Spaceship Company, a joint venture with Scaled that will manufacture many more spaceships. Incidentally, he headed the National Space Society before he became Chief of Staff at a little-known federal agency called NASA. When he left Washington, he was given NASA's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal. George, welcome back to Planetary Radio. And I'm going to save the introduction of our last guest for a couple of minutes.

Be patient, Bobak. What an amazing setting for the party this year. Yes, this is incredible. We're definitely off the charts. This is our most amazing venue ever. We're very excited because I was just talking to one of the directors here at the museum and he was reminding me how two years ago to the day

because we like things to be to the day at Yuri's Night, the head of NASA made his announcements. Charlie Bolden said that the shuttle would be coming to Los Angeles. And so we're also here. He reminded me we're celebrating that extra anniversary too.

This is, though, only the latest in a long line of Yuri's Night celebrations. You two were there at the beginning. I'm very proud to say that I got in there as well. You were too. Yeah, I showed up at a meeting at Caltech in a classroom with these crazy youngsters who wanted to put together a party for space. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how it's grown, right? So there are now over 300 parties around the world

and tens of thousands of people celebrating. I think it's fantastic. It's wonderful. And to do it here with a shuttle is fantastic. We always wanted Yuri's Night to be the thing that people would be celebrating 10,000 years in the future on other planets. And we're on our way, people. It's a hell of a good start. I got to ask you, are you going for the record for the longest delay between wedding and honeymoon? Nice one. Really? Nice one. for the longest delay between wedding and honeymoon?

Nice one. Really? Nice one. Well, you have a son, so... And a daughter. Well, you know, at the time we were engaged, the choice was to get married in space or do our honeymoon in space, and I wasn't going to delay the wedding, so I'm happy to wait as long as it takes to do my honeymoon in space. It'll be well worth the wait.

George, do you have any guess now at how much longer that wait is going to be? We've got a chief engineer here in the audience over there. Actually, what I'd love to do is I want to recognize a couple people in the audience real quick. So all the Virgin Galactic folks, can you raise your hands? And we've got a lot of folks here who are building the next generation of spaceships. But I also want to recognize more broadly, you know, like all the people who are involved in the space industry or building future vehicles here. Let's see that.

Raise your hands here. We've got a lot of folks here. We had a fantastic flight test today. We did a cold flow of the vehicle in glide test for the first time ever, and that means we're very close to the first powered flight of the vehicle system, which is huge. So we're really excited, and it's an exciting time for this whole industry. It's a great time to be involved in space.

How many people are on that waiting list now? So we have about, let's see, 573 people or something, plus or minus one or two. Well, that's more people than have been to space, period. That's a good point. We're looking to double it. Let me bring in the third guy here who, yes, absolutely, it's your turn. He's shaking his head. here who, yes, absolutely, it's your turn. He's shaking his head. Because I think you feel the same passion that is represented by what this night is all about. Our next guest has been with

JPL for 10 years now. He was with Curiosity, then went to Cassini-Huygens. That's that mission we have out there at Saturn, human emissary out there in the outer reaches of the solar system. And then he came back to Curiosity. That meant that he was part of putting this utterly awesome rolling chemistry lab on the surface of Mars. The TV cameras couldn't resist him when millions of us watched the Mars Science Laboratory survive its seven minutes of terror

to touch down on the surface of the red planet now according to his twitter page where he has nearly 60 000 followers now he is an exercise fiend and a mediocre shortstop please welcome curiosity flight director bobach for dowsing all right hello everybody because you may never allow me to talk to you again about this stuff All right. Hello, everybody. Because you may never allow me to talk to you again about this stuff, do you remember the first time someone in the media or online called you Mohawk guy? I don't actually remember the details, and I think it didn't really stick until the president did it.

And then it was kind of like, oh, well, that's kind of serious business now. So it was executive action. You're stuck with it. Yeah, I am. In fact, I can't change my haircut. That's what I was going to say. Do you feel like you can't ever have another hairstyle? But wasn't it originally you did, like, a different style for every mission? Right.

So for every, like, big event that we've had on this project, whether it be, like, a significant test of some sort or some event that we've kind of put a lot of effort in getting ready for, I just thought it would be a fun way to celebrate. And we'd have, you know, if it was test number 10, I'd put a big X on the side of my head. I think Christmas one year I had green and red for my hair. So it's just kind of fun things that we could all enjoy and I think kind of bring some levity to otherwise pretty serious events.

I'm sure you guys can relate. And then for landing, the team actually, I think they knew I was going to do something, so my boss sent out an e-mail to the team with a poll, basically asking the team to vote on what my hair should look like. And so they won. I'm glad, by the way, I can't tell you all the other options they had, but you guys, some of them were not very flattering for anybody. It was a reverse mohawk was one of them, I can't tell you all the other options they had, but some of them were not very flattering for anybody. It was a reverse Mohawk was one of them, I believe. No.

So I was in the room a couple of months ago. You were speaking to a couple hundred kids at a local astronomy conference, professional astronomers, but they brought in a lot of young people. You gave a great presentation, but what really impressed me the most was the way you communicated your passion for space exploration. Where does that come from? I mean, I grew up looking at shuttles like this. For me, I think it's so incredible that as a species, somehow we've decided we're going to go to places that don't necessarily have an immediately tangible benefit,

but we know there's something that kind of calls to us. And I think the moment for me, actually the moment that really sealed it for me was the Pathfinder mission in 97. It's something about seeing something we'd built on the surface of another planet. My mind was blown. I was like, I can't believe that we do this.

And it's so incredible when people are put to sort of like a task like this and that they can accomplish those things. And I feel really like, you know, I'm honored to be part of it. We have some of our team members here tonight. It's so, it's just incredible. And I am in awe every day that we get to do this. From there, please. Thank you.

There is a common thread that runs through everything that we have talked about, what Virgin Galactic does, what you do for a living, what this whole evening is about. Wouldn't you agree, Loretta? Absolutely. I mean, we can tell that we're aligned because, you know, Curiosity's out there hosting the first party on Mars right now. I mean, she gets it. She knows that it's all about making space cool.

My question is, do you think Opportunity was invited to the party? That's what I was going to say. I wanted to tweet that. I'm like, is Spirit and Oppie coming? What's going down over there? Spirit's getting a well-deserved rest, but Opportunity couldn't be busier, right? Opportunity's still doing great things. We're still learning a lot, actually, which is amazing for a mission that was supposed to last 90 days,

and it's now on its ninth year. George, you run a company for one of the most famous and most passionate guys on earth. He kind of gets this, doesn't he? I'm talking about Richard Branson, of course. Oh, right, yeah. No, he definitely gets it. I mean, I think in many ways, Richard and Bobak, you have managed to connect space with popular culture.

They both have managed to connect space with popular culture in a way that really hasn't been done very much, and that was what Yuri's Night was all about, was trying to connect popular culture in a really successful way with space. And, you know, Richard's fantastic. And he's super energized about what we're doing at Galactic now. I just talked to him a couple hours ago. And, you know, he wants to do everything, go to the moon, go to Mars, go to beyond.

And it's great to have people like that out there who have the resources to really make a big difference in our world because that's what it's going to take. It's fantastic. Well, Beck, you're not alone at JPL showing the kind of enthusiasm and passion you do. We see it in videos. We see it on those incredibly joyful times when you guys manage to put something safely down on Mars. You feel the spirit, right? Absolutely. I mean, you could tell, of course, that was a year, you know, years of most of our lives that we celebrate.

And I cried very obviously. It transcends us, obviously. We're really passionate about it. We love what we do. You know, it's a lot of hard work. But at the same time, it's really about the kind of the shared experience of it all. Like these guys are doing, I think the whole idea that one day we can all be out there and be explorers ourselves, that kind of helps motivate a lot of us. It's just such a great time, and I didn't know what I was getting into. This is the first thing I worked on out of college, and I didn't know what I was getting into, and ultimately the experience was so incredibly rewarding. What was amazing to me was the number of people who I talked to afterwards

who also shared how emotional that landing was for them, how exciting it was for them, and I realized it's kind of a human experience, even though they don't have to necessarily work on it to appreciate what it means to be somebody in this time that we're putting things in space and to other planets. I can tell you I was standing with 3,000 people at the Pasadena Convention Center,

and then we were looking on the big screens at you guys and at the crowds in Times Square in New York. Don't let anybody ever tell you that people are apathetic about space exploration. Loretta, you are still at the center of making Yuri's Night work. Do you think this is something that's going to become that 10,000-year tradition that George mentioned? I think it is, because I think it's captured people's imaginations,

and it's an outlet for their passion and their idealism and their inspiration for what humans are capable of in our future. So I think people like to grab onto things like that and run with it. So go for it. I have a quick question, actually, if you don't mind if I... I'm curious, will you be having an equally awesome party for the first man on Mars? I thought you were going to ask about the first woman in space

and the first American woman in space. The 50th and the 30th conjunction are in June. And we're working on that. But the first person on Mars, sure, just can't wait. Could be George Waltzides, Jr., you know. It could be my son. Yeah, who knows? Hopefully we don't have to wait that long.

But, yeah. I just want to, Matt, if you mind, can I just take a back? I just want to say I want to recognize all the folks who are here for being here because it's super important. You guys are emissaries out there. You care and you understand, and it's really important that you're here. I also want to call out a couple of special people. Buzz, as you know, is around here somewhere.

I don't know if he's around, still here. His book's coming out in just a few weeks. Yeah, his book's coming out in a few weeks. And Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize, is right back there. I didn't know Peter was out here. We would not be here without him. We owe Virgin Galactic and so many other things, including an interesting project that was sort of inspired by 97. But I really wanted to recognize you, Bubak,

because what inspires me is the concept that in 20 years, or maybe it's 25 years, we're going to have a generation of Mohawk space engineers out there who have been, and I'm not kidding about this, who have been inspired by that seminal moment of seeing you do what you did and that, the importance

of that moment for those kids out there cannot be underestimated and I just want to recognize you for that. Thank you very much. Great stuff. We are out of time and they've got a party to get on with here. The DJ is ready to go. I'm going to be back in a moment or two with Bruce Betts

for this week's edition of What's Up. But please first help me in thanking our guests on stage, Loretta Whitesides, George Whitesides, and Bobak. Pronounce it. The Mohawk. Thank you so much. This is Planetary Radio Live. We're ready to talk now to Bruce Betts,

because it's time for the What's Up segment of the program. Bruce, I'm sorry you couldn't join us at Yuri's night, but I think you may be at just as exciting a thing, the Planetary Defense Conference. I'd like to think so, yeah. It's the Every Other Year Saving the World Conference, bringing together experts in the asteroid threat, ranging from finding them to deflecting them to figuring out what you do if you can't deflect them.

I look forward to joining you there tomorrow. How are the night skies? Beautiful from Flagstaff, Arizona. But wherever you are, you've got Jupiter, if you don't have clouds, hanging out up there in the southwest looking like a super bright star. Saturn coming up in the mid-evening over in the east looking yellowish. We also have the Lyrids meteor shower peaking on April 22nd. Not traditionally one of the best, but every once in a while it spurts a bunch out.

Usually it's just in the 10, 20 meteors per hour from a dark site. We move on to this week in space history. It was a big week in the Apollo program. 1970, Apollo 13 made its way successfully back to Earth miraculously. And two years later, Apollo 16 both launched and landed on the moon during this week. Now, I'm at a conference, so you're going to have to bear with me because I'm going to have to do this just in a sedate way. Random Space Fact! Did you get any funny stares? No, I didn't do it right, obviously.

I'll give you a dollar if you really go crazy with it. Well, if you make it five, I might consider it. Okay, five bucks. Five bucks, you're on. Random space fact! But I'm not going to look around now. That's the key to doing something obnoxious. Okay, checks in the mail. Okay, good. We now, of course, have discovered thousands of near-Earth asteroids that are actually in Earth orbit crossing orbits, so they're for dangerous. But the first Earth crossing near-Earth asteroid was not found until 1932.

We dive into the trivia contest now, and we were playing Where in the Solar System? And I asked you, where in the solar system is Ontario Lacus? Very good response this week. Helga Bjorkog? I think we're going to have to bar all Scandinavian and East European entrants, because I cannot say their names. Helga is from Norway. I'm not sure that's their fault. Helga is from Norway. I'm not sure that's their fault. No, no, no, not at all.

It's just my handicap. Helga, first of all, said it's in Canada. No, no, it's not. But it then went on to say it's a lake composed of ethane, methane, and propane near the south pole of Titan. Is Helga correct? That is correct. It has been observed from Cassini at various wavelengths and shown to actually be liquid, as one likes lakes to be. A number of people mentioned that it sort of looks like a footprint, either a human footprint or, as Daryl Gardner pointed out, looks like Bigfoot has been on Titan. Really Big foot. All right. I like this one as well from Martin

Grieve. Martin listens regularly in his car or while he's doing the dishes. But he really, the reason I really wanted to mention him is because he lives in St. Thomas, Ontario, very close to Lake Ontario, and he thought that he better enter. So you get a shout out, Martin, but I'm afraid you don't get Bill's voice. Did we get anyone writing in

who lived near the one on Titan? I look forward to getting those someday if we keep doing this show long enough. All right, thematic to the conference that you'll be joining me at. What is the diameter of Meteor Crater in Arizona? The Beringer Crater, the best preserved impact crater on Earth. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest and find out how to submit your entry.

And you have until the 22nd this time. That would be April 22nd at 2 p.m. Pacific time. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about your conference center. This one's kind of nice. Oh, I look forward to joining you there tomorrow. Have a great time. Thank you, and good night.

He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, joining us from the Planetary Defense Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. We're going to try and bring that to you on next week's show. Some cool stuff. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, and by the fired-up members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies. Music Music Music Music

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